Monday, September 10, 2012

Can You Top These?

Every now and then, in the collection of papers passed down
by my husband’s grandmother, Agnes Tully Stevens, I find a newspaper clipping
with no date, no source, no notes even identifying the reason for saving it.
The clipping I’ve scanned today belongs in that category—almost. Except for the
handwritten note on the side margin, I can only imagine who originally thought
this slip of paper was worth saving.

Perhaps this was one of the missing enclosures referred to
by Will and Agnes’ son Frank in his many letters home during the war. I’ve seen
him mention stuff like this in these letters, but when it came time to look back in the
envelope, I’d find no sign of the missing newspaper clipping. Something like this article would be just his
style.

The clipping is about an organization founded in 1929 in Wisconsin—the Burlington Liars Club. Evidently, newspaperman Otis Hulett gathered some of his cronies on
New Year to determine which was the biggest whopper told in the past year.

The Burlington
Liars Club—to which you made a passing reference the other day—does it still
exist?—S. T., Des Plaines

Unless Otis Hulett, founder (in
1929) and president, is lying in his teeth, it certainly does. Actually,
though, it is not so much a club as a group of contest judges who get together
every New Year’s Day to select the biggest lie of the year. Anyone can submit
an entry, the only requirement being the ability to tell a whopper. This might
exclude only such types as George Washington, who not only could not tell a lie
but had no teeth (or few, at any rate). Entries should go to the Burlington Liars Club, Burlington, Wis. 53105.

Winning lies usually have been short
and preposterous: “Our town is so small we had to extend the town limits to put
in a phone booth.” Or, “The food here is so bad that, if it weren’t for the
salt and pepper, I would starve to death.” Again: “It has been raining so much
the past few weeks that, when I went into the back yard, the night crawlers
were hanging themselves on the clothesline to dry out.” But in 1942, the
championship went to Joseph Paul Goebbels for his whole body of propaganda
broadcasts from Berlin.
Originality is a major quality the judges look for in the entries. About 80 per
cent of all entries duplicate others, past and present, Hulett said, insisting
that, preposterous as this figure may seem, it’s no lie.

8 comments:

:) Someone (or someones) in the Tully-Stevens family just enjoyed a good laugh.

I bet Frank sang songs like this one too:

"Salvation Army, Salvation ArmyPut a nickel in the drumSave another drunken bum(or we changed up and said 'Take a quarter out and run')Salvation Army, Salvation ArmyPut a nickel in the drum and you'll be saved

All the girls in our town wear grass skirtsBoooo!But we got lawn mowersYeah!"

Reminds me a little of the segment they do in Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, on NPR. Do you hear it? The one where the tell three stories and only one is true and the contestant has to figure out which one. Often the truth is the most outrageous of them all! LOL!

About Me

It is my contention that, after a lifetime, one of the greatest needs people have is to be remembered. They want to know: have I made a difference?
I write because I can't keep for myself the gifts others have entrusted to me. Through what I've already been given--though not forgetting those to whom I must pass this along--from family I receive my heritage; through family I leave a legacy. With family I weave a tapestry. These are my strands.